Author: Ricardo Gibert
Date: 09:29:33 05/18/03
Go up one level in this thread
On May 18, 2003 at 09:40:34, Alvaro Jose Povoa Cardoso wrote:
>Hi, I was thinking on upgrading my system to an Athlon 64 (not yet released) by
>Christmas 2003.
>Assuming those systems will be available by year end, I was wondering if by then
>you will have a binary of crafty that would run 64 bit instructions and if it
>would run normaly with winboard.
>Also, will it run on the current Windows XP (32 bit)?
>
>
>Best regards,
>Alvaro Cardoso
Don't be so eager to jump on the athlon 64 bandwagon. Too many things are new
about it:
(1) New 64 bit cpu
(2) New supporting chipsets
(3) New 64 bit OS
(4) New hardware drivers
(5) New 64 bit compilers
(6) and more generally: New 64 bit software
I'm not trying to say Athlon 64 is bad, but you are getting first versions of
virtually *everything* all the way down the line and all elements are quite
interdependent. One of the elements is bound to come up short in some way
significant and guess who will have to suffer the consequences? Will it be you?
I know this sounds like I'm spreading a lot of FUD ("Yeah, no kidding!"), but it
makes a lot of sense too. I would assume that (3), (4), (5) and/or (6) will come
up short. The software side is usually the one that needs a lot of time to catch
up.
This means you ought to evaluate it mostly for its 32 bit capabilites. If it
still looks good to you, then go ahead and jump in early, but consider that
price-wise, you should probably compare it with 32 bit dual CPU systems when I
think it does not look so good in comparison.
I personally think that in the long run, AMD has a winner and find it strange
that Intel would cede x86-64 to AMD.
PS: The considerations for the software developer are quite a bit different than
for the end user. Competition can force them to jump in, since they cannot
afford to allow conceding a long lead time to other developers. The cost of a
new system and supporting software is relatively insignificant compared to what
is at stake money-wise.
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